The Rainmaker: Capable Cooper has P&O in his sights for Singapore

(Filed: 15/01/2006)

Capable Cooper has P&O in his sights for Singapore

Ahoy there! P&O, the container terminals operator and former cruise company, is adrift on the high seas of finance, just waiting to be boarded.

Enter the latest buccaneer to fire a broadside - Tom Cooper, the European head of mergers and acquisitions at UBS. He is armed with "approach" cash (a pre-conditional bid of some £3.5bn) on behalf of the Port of Singapore Authority, itself owned by Temasek, Singapore's investment arm.

The actual bid will be made some time in the two weeks following P&O's re-scheduled extraordinary general meeting this coming Friday. Rival Dubai Ports World already has £3.3bn cash on the table.

Cooper, a slim, greying 43-year-old, may have to persuade his client to find even more than the indicated offer if the current market valuation (£200m north of the approach offer) is anything to go by.

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But this should present few problems to the St Albans School and Oxford-educated banker. Married at 22, Cooper has three children and relaxes by swimming and playing tennis. Cooper is reputedly proudest of acquiring the cruise business, P&O Princess, for his client, Carnival, in 2003.

The $5bn-plus merger was seen as great value for P&O shareholders at the time, but Cooper took the long, strategic view, and Carnival has done well out of the deal - which, for what it's worth, won shed loads of industry awards (European and UK M&A deal of the year, etc, etc).

"He's a strategist, certainly, but also an all-rounder. You can see that he's good with clients and the relationship side of things," says a competitor.

"Tom's the new breed of investment banker," according to a former colleague. "He's Oxbridge-educated, yes, but not a blue-blood, nor an Ivy League preppy-type."

Classless or not, Cooper is a numerate negotiator, having trained as an accountant at KPMG on leaving university. He joined what was then known as Warburgs in 1988, and has been focused on M&A and deal generation for the past four years.

Cooper the polymath has certainly been in demand over the past year. He obtained a £4bn price for his client, Exel, when it was taken over by Deutsche Post. He also sold PacifiCorp to MidAmerican Energy Holdings, realising £5.1bn for Scottish Power.

A smaller, but highly public transaction was the sale of lastminute.com to Sabre Holdings for £584m. He also advised Saga, the provider of "specialist services" for people aged 50 and over, obtaining a chunky £1.35bn in the sale to private equity firm, Charterhouse Capital Partners.

A skilled buyer and seller, will the persuasive, mild-mannered Cooper's strategic view of P&O's worth prevail?